


The Walls Do Not Fall

by pathera



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Afghanistan, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-08
Updated: 2012-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-29 05:55:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/316524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pathera/pseuds/pathera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Morgana dreams, and Merlin comes home from war. Written for merlin_holidays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Walls Do Not Fall

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for leviathans_moon in the merlin_holidays fest, originally posted [here](http://merlin-holidays.livejournal.com/36058.html). Thanks go to the lovely mods of that fest, who were exceedingly patient with me, to my awesome roommate for betaing, and to leviathans_moon for the amazing set of prompts that inspired this! Thet title is taken from H.D.'s book of poetry by the same name.  
>  **Disclaimer:** The characters depicted herein belong to Shine and BBC. I make no profit from this endeavor.

Morgana dreams of war, perpetual and unending. She dreams a thousand lifetimes of it—knows intimately the shape of it, the way it shades the world darker, the way it destroys and builds on the ruins and circles back around to destruction again. Not all of the dreams are real—they don’t all pulse with the clarity of memory, instead flickering through a swirl of darkness and fire and fear. Some of them though, some have those sharp edges, barely dull enough to distinguish them as _past_ instead of _future_ or _present _. These burst behind her closed eyes, a history of war moving backwards through gunfire and the whistling sound of falling bombs to the clash of steel, the sound of swords upon armor and stone battering against fortified walls. And sometimes the dreams dip deeper into the past, down into the places she wishes she could banish from inside of herself, and these dreams are sharper than past, present, or future combined.__

 _She loses count of how many times she watches Arthur die on a hill top beneath an eternally blue sky._

 _  
_(But she never sees Merlin.)_   
_

\---

The boys have been gone for seventy-seven days. Whenever Morgana scries for them she can find Arthur, his skin too tan and his hair too blond and his eyes not blue enough, but when she turns to seek out Merlin all she gets is black, glossy and shallow, like the slippery surface of the glass she is looking in. She slides away every time.

She has shattered five mirrors trying to get through.

\---

They have been gone for one hundred and twenty-three days.

Morgana cannot find either of them. She looks and looks and looks, pours more and more of herself into the mirror and reaches only black, merciless and flat. Her dreams are stubbornly silent on the matter—oh, she dreams of war, only dreams of war now, but she dreams of old ones, not the one she wishes to see. She is blind, left pacing and picking up broken pieces of glass because she has destroyed another mirror, racking up bad luck like a coveted collector’s item.

When the news finally comes, cracks spiderweb through every mirror in the house.

\---

On the one hundred and fifty-second day, Merlin comes home. He is a too familiar stranger, the lines of his body the same and yet sharper, harsher. He is too trained, the set of his shoulders too straight, the line of his neck too tense, and his left leg drags, as though unwilling to cooperate. He alternates between stillness and agitation, either unmoving or unable to _stop_.

There’s too much war in his blood, Morgana thinks. He has a soldier’s eyes now. He won’t ever be able to shake that loose, won’t ever fade back into the man he was before he went off to the sand and the sun and the constant threat.

When he sees her, he hesitates. He looks at her and slows and they dance for a moment on the edge of a precipice. Then she walks straight into his arms, which close tightly around her, and they lurch away from that brink of oblivion.

She is too aware, her face buried in his chest, that they could still fall at any moment.

\---

Morgana cannot sleep. Partly because she is listening, partly because she doesn’t want to close her eyes. These are not unconnected reasons—she is listening for sounds from the living room, for the muffled incoherent whine that means Merlin’s nightmares have finally caught hold of him. If she closes her eyes she will be right in the midst of them as well, broken fragments of his memories filtering into her mind like smoke filling a room. She has woken from them every night this week, her throat raw from screaming, the taste of sand still in her mouth, phantom pain fading from her body. Merlin doesn’t wake—he thrashes through them, caught and trapped and tangled in them, but unable to break away without help. He has been sleeping on her couch for three days now--since he refuses to go home to his mother, refuses even more to go back to the flat he shared with Arthur--and she woke him last night. He surged upwards violently, his arms flailing out trying to strike his enemies, his eyes glowing gold. Then, realizing it was her, the glow faded and he stilled and then he turned his face away, ducking away from her gaze, flinching away from her touch.

Today, they both pretended it never happened. If Merlin won’t hold eye contact with her and shies away from physical contact, well, it has been that way since he came home. He looks sorry, sometimes, when she reaches out the way she always has and he jerks away. He tries to make it up to her, apologies written in his embrace, but there is space between them that neither of them can bridge properly.

There is a sound, but not one she is expecting. A footstep, light and trained and nearly silent, but it makes her sit upright. The door pushes open, just enough to show the silhouette of Merlin’s figure in the door frame. He freezes when he sees her and she smiles faintly.

“You’re awake,” he says.

“So are you.”

“Apparently.”

She thinks about reaching over to the side and turning on the lamp but doesn’t, leaving them in darkness. She can see the shape of him if not the details, and maybe that is better. “Can’t sleep?”

He takes a step forward, closing the door a bit behind him. “I’m not tired.”

“Liar.” He turns his head away and she chews the inside of her cheek, then pats the bed next to her. “Sit?”

He approaches the bed, sitting on the edge. There is more light here, squeezing through the curtains, enough to show some of the facets of his face. She waits for him to say something; he looks everywhere but at her. “I—“ he starts, and then stops. “Why are all the mirrors broken?”

His question startles her. She draws her knees up and looks at him, considering. “I was trying to find you,” she says after a moment. “Every time I tried…well, you can see what happened.”

He moves a little more fully onto the bed, turning his body towards her but looking fixedly away. “I didn’t want you to see.”

She closes her eyes. “I know.” And she does, she understands. He is a soldier, with war running through his blood and fire burning under his skin and destruction in his hands, and after hundreds of years he is still trying to protect her from things he cannot stop. He shifts next to her, as though he is going to leave, but she opens her eyes and reaches out, grabbing his wrist. “Stay,” she says, half a demand, half a question.

He looks down at her hand, then gently peels her fingers from his wrist, interlacing his fingers with hers and shifting onto the bed, laying on his side facing her. She mimics his position, squeezing his hand and he finally meets her gaze. “I keep dreaming about it,” he admits softly.

“I know,” she says again. She has dreamt it but not lived it, watched it from a dozen angles and screamed and never been able to stop it from happening. She watches Arthur die on that hill top a thousand times, and now she watches him die in that burst of gunfire, his body arcing as he is struck.

“Why is it,” Merlin asks, “that I can never save him when it really matters?”

She wishes that she had an answer for him. Instead she curls into him, just a bit closer, and his other hand comes up to touch her shoulder, drawing her in. She breathes in, closing her eyes. He smells like mint and rain and, oh, how she has missed that scent, just as she has missed the curve of his arm around her and the warmth of his body. She touches his face, running her fingers over the planes of his cheekbones and down, over the line of his neck. She has to memorize him all over again, find the places where smooth skin has been replaced by raised, where the lines of his body have changed. He doesn’t stop her as her hand keeps moving downwards, over his shoulders, over his torso; he moves away from her long enough to pull his shirt over his head and then moves back, closer, closer. There are scars on his torso, ones that she skims around, except for one on his right shoulder, a round red puckering. She sits up.

“Let me see,” she says. He sits up as well, angled towards her pointedly; he seems to know exactly what she is talking about, because he takes a breath and turns.

Where on the front of his torso the scar is fairly small, on his back it is a raised, snarled mess of flesh, in the process of healing. She lays a hand on his other shoulder, feeling his tension, then tugs him backwards. “Wha—“ he begins, and she cuts him off, kissing him. He shifts, swinging around to press her back, coming down next to her. He kisses her and she tangles her hand in his hair, guiding him, holding him in place. He brushes a thumb over her cheek and pulls back. He is shaking, just a faint tremor that he cannot control building in his body; he buries his face in the crook of her neck and she holds him close, carding her hand through his hair, smoothing it back, raking her fingernails gently across his scalp. He kisses her neck softly and lifts his head.

“Morgana—“

She puts her finger on his lips, silencing him. “Shh, Merlin. Sleep.”

He sighs, looking at her. “It’s not going to magically get better, you know.”

She interlaces their fingers again. “I know,” she says simply, and kisses him, soft and sad, grief a bitter taste on her tongue.

Tonight, there will be no dreams.


End file.
